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Upper Trishuli 3A project completes 80pc civil works

The fate of the 60MW project had plunged into uncertainty after China Gezhouba Group Company, the project’s contractor, stopped all works following the quakes and did not resume them for a long time

Dec 31, 2017-Upper Trishuli 3A Hydroelectric Project, which was hit hard by the earthquakes of 2015, has completed over 80 percent of civil works, putting it on track to meeting the revised power production deadline of April 2019.

The fate of the 60MW project had plunged into uncertainty after China Gezhouba Group Company (CGGC), the project’s contractor, stopped all works following the quakes and did not resume them for a long time.

But construction works are now moving ahead at an accelerated pace, according to Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), the state-owned power utility and the owner of the project.

The Chinese contractor has so far completed excavation of 4.1-km headrace tunnel. It is now concreting areas of the tunnel where “weak rocks” are present. “Weak rocks”

are present in around 25 percent area of the tunnel, NEA said.

“Of around 1,000 meters that need to be concreted, works on around 400 meters have been completed,” said Ambikesh Jha, the NEA appointed site in-charge of the project. “The remaining work will be completed within a couple of months.”

The CGGC is also assessing the damage inflicted by the earthquakes to the dam. “For this, water has been diverted towards the dam to check the resilience,” said Jha. “No major problem has been detected so far.”

Lately, the Chinese contractor has also started building the project’s power house in full swing. Currently, foundations are being built to install the turbines. “We are planning to install the turbines before the start of monsoon,” said Jha.

In the meantime, a technical team of the Nepal Army has repaired the access road that leads to the project site and is carrying out works to mitigate the landslide risk on both sides of the dam.

The earthquake-triggered landslides had affected areas close to the dam site, posing a threat to safety of workers. The army team has since completed shotcreting the hill that lies on the right side of the dam. Shotcreting is the process of spraying concrete throughout the surface of hills to avert landslides.

To prevent landslides on the left side of the dam, the army is building fences with a special type of wire. “The army has built a small cable car to transport construction materials and is likely to complete the netting and fencing works on the hill within a couple of months,” said Jha.

The NEA is building the 60MW project located in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts with concessional loan of $114.7 million from the Export-Import (Exim) Bank of China.

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